After a quiet 36 hours, NBA free company exploded into life on Tuesday. As Fourth of July picnics hummed alongside and fireworks had been readied, Gordon Hayward and his Gamers’ Tribune editors scrutinized a 2102-word final draft and Hayward’s agent desperately tried to repel studies that his shopper’s choice had been made.
In the end, it had been made, and it dominated headlines for six hours. However it wasn’t the one vital transfer of the day. A Western Convention contender additionally loaded up, a restricted free agent bought a max provide, a rebuild was spiced up with veterans, and a Los Angeles workforce would possibly wish to signal Derrick Rose.
However earlier than we get to that rumor … To the grades!
GRADING TUESDAY’S DEALS
Gordon Hayward agrees to join the Celtics: It positive as hell wasn’t the most graceful process we’ve ever seen, however on the finish of Independence Day, the Celtics bought their man. Boston lastly let off some fireworks on the Fourth of July, agreeing to phrases on a four-year, $128 million maximum-salaried contract with Gordon Hayward, the highest remaining free agent within the class of 2017 and the All-Star swingman Boston has coveted to bolster its efforts to knock the Cleveland Cavaliers off their perch atop the Jap Convention.
The 27-year-old Hayward selected a Celtics workforce led by Brad Stevens, who coached him as an undergrad at Butler, over the Utah Jazz, the workforce that drafted him and helped him develop right into a 2017 All-Star, and the Miami Warmth, who provided a championship tradition crafted by godfather Pat Riley and the attract of South Seaside. In doing so, Hayward provides one other top-notch offensive weapon to a Boston facet that gained 53 video games final season, earned the East’s No. 1 seed, and made the convention finals.
Hayward has lengthy ranked among the many NBA’s steadiest risers, bettering his abilities and per-game scoring common year-over-year to the purpose that he stood final season as certainly one of just a dozen players to common higher than 21 factors, 5 rebounds and three.5 assists per sport. After spending the final seven seasons in Utah, Hayward won't have the Q ranking of the 11 different names on that listing, however he’s large, sturdy, environment friendly, efficient and versatile.
He’s adept at working the offense within the pick-and-roll or working off screens for catch-and-shoot seems, able to defending a number of positions, and cozy both performing as a No. 1 possibility with out shrinking from the second or working off the ball within the presence of one other dominant playmaker. He was the perfect and most necessary offensive participant on a 51-win Jazz workforce, and now he slots in on the wing between dynamic All-Star level man Isaiah Thomas and clean playmaking heart Al Horford.
Like Horford, Boston’s prime free-agent signing final yr, Hayward can do greater than somewhat little bit of nearly every thing, and do all of it someplace between adequately and exceptionally. Pretty much as good as Jae Crowder’s been for the C’s, Hayward is a greater general participant, providing a direct improve whose presence permits Boston’s final two prime draft picks, forwards Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, the advantage of not needing to be prepared for struggle instantly. Hayward is absolutely good, and he makes a extremely good Celtics workforce higher.
Whether or not he makes them good sufficient, after all, is the $64,000 query.
As famous by ESPN Insider Bobby Marks, Celtics president Danny Ainge and his entrance workplace must pull off “a sequence of transactions” with the intention to create cap area to comfortably match Hayward’s max contract on their books. Key reserve Kelly Olynyk is gone. Certainly one of Boston’s prior prime perimeter items — Crowder, Avery Bradley or Marcus Smart — might need to go out, too.
Sacrificing among the depth that helped make final yr’s mannequin so powerful would possibly imply that the addition of even a participant as proficient as Hayward gained’t vault the Celtics right into a high-50s win complete and standing as one of many NBA’s actually dominant groups. Come the postseason, although, he’ll give Stevens one other professional ball-handler, shooter, scorer and wing possibility — a star-caliber expertise who raises the Celtics’ ceiling in a manner that the complementary items Boston must jettison to make room for him merely couldn’t.
Ainge has been constructing — slowly, patiently, fastidiously, agonizingly constructing — to attempt to craft a workforce with younger star expertise and depth that fits his coach’s system on each ends of the ground. One with hopes of competing now, and with the promise of with the ability to compete for a few years to return. Effectively, proper now, Ainge has grafted an ideal match, in-his-prime All-Star onto the backbone of 53-win workforce with out sacrificing both of two potential top-five picks in subsequent yr’s draft. Yeah, it could’ve been good to get Paul George, too, however a win is a win. Including the perfect moderately obtainable wing available on the market greater than qualifies … even when Hayward took the scenic path to asserting his choice. — Dan Devine
